R.E.M

To coincide with yesterday’s release of R.E.M‘s new album Collapse Into Now, the American alternative rockers announced their first remix competition. Stems from the song ‘It Happened Today’ from the new album are available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Stems (legally) up for grabs include percussion, brass, piano, celeste, vibraphone, guitar, drum, banjo and mandolin stems and of course Michael Stipe’s vocals. If Stipe isn’t enough for you there’s even a bit of Eddie Vedder on the track!!

Jacknife Lee, who helped produce Collapse Into Now with R.E.M, said that “Right from the early stages of recording this song in New Orleans Michael wanted to share the files with people to hear their different ideas and versions.” This was the impetus for the remix project and that’s exactly what Stipe has got!